Having a writer on board is a chance for us to get the artists’ view of intellectual property piracy and we discuss the SOPA and ProtectIP legislation currently being debated in the United States. There’s good news here in Ireland with the prospect of 1000 Paypal jobs and the rise of the Coder Dojos. Ireland’s newest app developer sensation is just 12 years old! (And he’s only been coding for 2 months!)

About Conn Ó Muíneacháin

Conn Ó Muíneacháin works at Blacknight, Ireland's largest provider of domains and hosting. He's an award-winning radio producer, podcaster and blogger. He's an engineer as well (not the award-winning kind).
Conn produces video for Blacknight and edits Technology.ie. Labhair Gaeilge leis!

I’ve Spotify (signed up very early and was grandfathered in) – for listening to new music it’s not as good as Last FM – the tagging is terrible and listening to Artist Radio plays 80% just that artist rather than similar bands. Last FM has the opposite problem – ask for music like the Pixies and you’ll never hear a Pixies song.

But Spotify is great for finding bands you do like, making tracklists etc.

What are you using Spotify with? ie. desktop or mobile? I know that quite a few of my friends got accounts ages ago, but I don’t think I ever did (I’d have to double-check my email!)

Personally I love Last FM, as it helps me to discover new music that fits with my taste. Of course you’re right – you can never get to listen to the exact music you want, but I love exploring other people’s “stations”

I’m using both – I had to make a UK iTunes account (there’s a hacks way to do it) to get the iPhone app. It means you can download tunes locally. I ‘be also found new music through it, just wish it had some kind of filter so I could say – “yeah I like Band of Horses so give me artists like them” – rather than playing 8 Band of Horses songs in a row followed by a Bon Iver track.

Last.fm is really good at looking into the collections of others who I follow on Twitter. I also like letting Last.fm run playlists from people I’ve never met but who have “super” similarity to my listening patterns. It’s better than radio play.